• • • The free-knowledge fundamentalist 
The Economist Atlas Shrugged  |The Fountainhead  | Profile of Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales.Ayn Rand believed that truth exists independently of the minds and opinions of people. This ran directly counter to the postmodernist view that there are many truths, depending on the perspective of the observer. And Wikipedia’s process seems, on the face of it, to assume the postmodernist rather than the Objectivist stance. The truths described in its millions of articles evolve over time and through the dialectic of editing wars, leading to a new and fuzzy concept of reality dubbed “wikiality”. “Ayn Rand would be turning in her grave,” thinks [Wikipedia co-founder Larry] Sanger. Mr Wales takes a different view. “I think that reality exists and that it’s knowable,” he says, adding that Wikipedia aims not for truth with a capital T but for consensus. “You go meta,” he says, meaning “beyond” the disputes and to the underlying facts. For instance, when deciding how to describe abortion, “I may not agree that it’s a sin, but I can certainly agree that the pope thinks it’s a sin.”   Published: 2008-06-05